Wagging tongues of ferns and salty yarns

Egglestone, Teesdale Near the hart's tongues, mosses clinging to the rock were becoming fossilised, encased in tufa

This section of moist, shady, wooded bank above the footpath, extending for perhaps 150 metres, is covered with the largest concentration of hart's tongue ferns I have ever seen. This fern, Phyllitis scolopendrium, dominates because it thrives in calcareous woodland soils over limestone and the conditions here are perfect.

This morning, as I approached, hundreds of long, undulating, emerald-green tongues wagged in the breeze: if these plants needed a collective name "a gossip" of hart's tongues would do nicely.